


This Was Never a Love Story

by misura



Category: The Mentalist
Genre: Dark, M/M, Pre-Slash, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-11
Updated: 2011-06-11
Packaged: 2017-10-20 08:17:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/210688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misura/pseuds/misura
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>It's like Red John's sent him a note saying: </i>'well, this was fun, but I'm bored now. bye.'<i>, except that there hasn't been a note. There hasn't even been a murder.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	This Was Never a Love Story

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sprl1199](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sprl1199/gifts).



> definitely set pre-third season, and possibly incorrectly tagged - I just found it tricky to pick a term that fits.

On some level, Jane knows he's been on edge these past weeks, has been working up to a breakdown for these past _months_ , perhaps - he sees a lot of death, a lot of wickedness in this line of work he's chosen to make his; it's only natural it would get to him a little, he tells himself.

And then he finds himself slamming a fist on the table he's gotten for a desk, possibly spilling his coffee and probably, definitely yelling, and that's when it hits him that this is more than 'a little'.

"Why isn't he _doing_ anything?"

Silence. There's a case - a murder they're working on. It's complicated, with too many suspects and not quite airtight alibis. It's not as if they've been doing _nothing_ recently.

They just haven't been investigating any Red John cases.

"Maybe he quit," Rigsby says.

"Lying low." Cho, always slightly more on the ball, slightly more attuned to what Jane's thinking, because Jane doesn't want to hear that maybe Red John's quit killing, or woke up one morning and figured that hey, maybe this whole serial killer thing wasn't such a great way of life after all.

Jane wants to _find_ him. He wants Red John to kill again, only this time, unlike all previous times, there will be something at the crime scene to track down the man who did this.

Maybe, Jane reflects, that makes him a bit less than a good person. Good persons probably don't want for a serial killer to pick out another victim to murder gruesomely.

Lisbon frowns, but she doesn't actually say anything out loud.

At least nobody's suggesting Red John might have murdered someone without their noticing. Jane imagines it, imagines someone else going all over _his_ crime scene. It makes him want to hit something.

"Sorry," he says, managing a sheepish chuckle that maybe fools Cho. "Too much coffee, too little sleep."

Lisbon's frown doesn't actually go away. "Maybe you could take the afternoon off." It's a little past lunch.

"You know what," Jane says. "I think I will."

He wonders what they'll say about him when he's gone, if any of them realize quite what's going through his mind. Probably not. None of them ever even _pretended_ to be psychic, after all.

 

There used to be a time when Jane's feelings for the man known as Red John could be summed up in one word, one simple term to describe one simple emotion.

Hatred.

You don't love the man who's killed your wife and your child. You don't want to help the police put him in prison, to see him in court. You don't care about his past, why he's become what he is. You're not interested in figuring out how he thinks, how his mind works.

You just want him dead.

 

The word for what he feels right now, Jane decides, is _jilted_. Spurned. Ignored. It's like Red John's sent him a note saying: _'well, this was fun, but I'm bored now. bye.'_ , except that there hasn't been a note. There hasn't even been a murder.

If Jane knew how, he'd sent Red John a note saying: _'you bastard, you murdered my wife and my child, and now all of a sudden you're ignoring me? what gives?'_ , except that he'd know that if Lisbon ever found out about it, she'd move heaven and earth to never let him in on any of her cases ever again, and Jane isn't sure if she wouldn't be right.

 

 _'Your fault.'_ Even in Jane's dreams, Red John doesn't have a face. If Jane'd had even a shred of psychicness (psychicality?), he thinks Red John would have a face. Jane would remember it when he woke up, and he'd take the description to Lisbon and bam, case closed. _'Your fault, Patrick.'_

Jane knows about 'survivor's guilt'. He's read a lot of books and articles about it, not all of them voluntarily. Some, he's read to pass the psych evaluation Lisbon had him take.

 _'If you'd just kept your mouth shut,'_ Red John says. _'If you had stayed polite.'_

They don't know how Red John picks his victims, why he picks _that_ person and not _this_ one. They've got some guesses, some theories.

 _'You insulted me,'_ Red John says.

 _'Why didn't you kill_ me _, then?'_ Jane asks. He wouldn't have liked to die. Who does? There would have been a rightness to it, though, a logic. Cause and effect.

And sometimes, this is the point where Red John says: _'One day, maybe I will'_ and then Jane will sleep for a few hours and wake up feeling better.

Tonight, Red John says: _'Because you're special'_ and Jane wakes up, wide-eyed and hard, listening to the sound of his own breathing for perhaps five seconds before his stomach turns.

He barely makes it to the bathroom in time.


End file.
